Jonathan Sarfati: An unpublished obituary I wrote for New Zealand Chess:One good thing to come out of World War II (if one may talk of such trivia compared to such a tragedy) was the considerable enrichment of NZ chess. This was from players fleeing to this safe haven from a Europe ravaged by the quasi-religious philosophies of Nazism and Communism. The most significant of course was the late Estonian Ortvin Sarapu, who helped raise the standard of NZ chess by several hundred Elo points. Another significant figure was Arcadii Feneridis from Crimea. He was one of the leading players, NZ co-Champion in 1957, dominant in Wellington for two decades, was still playing reasonable blitz chess against me last aged 92, and last I heard was still alive at 98.
Zygmunt Frankel, a long-term friend and chess rival of ‘Fenny’s’, was also alive and playing at the Wellington/Civic Chess Club back in until just before his death. He was a Jew from Krakow, Poland, who fled Nazi persecution into the Samarkand region of Uzbekistan, then part of the USSR, and after the War found his way to NZ. The younger players at the Wellington Club who encountered him may not have realized that Zyg had played in the New Zealand Championship many times in the 1950s and 60s. Since this was a 12-player round robin, this made him one of the top dozen players in the country for all that time.
Zyg had a very good knowledge of both chess history and the classic games, and had a sharp eye for tactics. He also liked to try new ideas in opening theory and strategy. This was not unreasonable, as the thesis of IM John Watson’s fine book Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy is that modern chess is very ‘rule independent’. I.e. the ‘rules’ of strategy are descriptions of features that confer an advantage in a statistical number of actual games, but are by no means absolute. However, to balance that, GM Eduard Gufeld told me in 1988 that the rules do genuinely apply in 80% of cases. It must be honestly said that Zyg’s play was fairly often objectively unsound, which explains why his score against Sarapu in NZ Championships was one draw in 12 games. But in all fairness, Sarapu in those days scored heavily against everyone else in NZ too, while Zyg scored well against lesser players who couldn’t solve the new problems he set them. In fact, some strong scalps show that Zyg’s original style could be dangerous to anyone.
Zyg also had two spells as editor of New Zealand Chess, 1962–5 and 1985–
6. His opinions on many topics shone through with ample supporting arguments, not always sound in my view. But I agree, for example, with his cogent defence of the Soviet grandmasters against Fischer’s charge of cheating at the Curaçao Candidates in 1962. Probably his main achievement as editor was a whole double issue devoted to the Petrosyan–Botvinnik World Championship match, 1963. This was one of the first English accounts of this match, and Zyg’s fluency in Russian enabled him to read many articles inaccessible to most English speakers.
I knew Zyg from the late 70s when I started playing as a child, while Zyg was already a hardened veteran. He was famous for his heavy accent that disguised an excellent command of spoken and written English, as well as for is chain smoking. Fortunately for his health he gave up smoking in later years, as did Sarapu.
Zyg is survived by three children, of whose academic achievements he was very proud.
Kibitzing
